Category Archives: Conversions

So, I’ve painted the Sorceror now as well. Here’s the paints used for the NMM bronze on the staff:

Base – Mourn fang brown base

Lightening:

Layer one – 2:1 Mournfang brown : White scar

Layer two – 1:1 Mournfang brown: White scar

Layer three – 1:2 mournfang brown:White scar

Darkening:

Layed one – Dryad bark

Layer two – 2:1 dryad bark : abandon black

Layer three – 1:1 dryad bark : abbadon black

Then highlighted with White scar (inc reflections), washed with Seraphim sepia all over, and then the main highlights picked out again in White scar. I’m quite happy with the results, which can be compared with the skull done in metallic paints – the icon and tip are NMM:

So, next on the list for conversion is the Dark Vengeance Librarian. I thought that with his hood and robes, as well as general posture and outstretched arm, that I would try to turn him into Cypher, the Fallen Angel. It also provides a good addition to my Chaos force, which is a little lighter on points than the Dark Angels after the two boxes are added (even considering the terminators jumping sides).

So, first off was to grab the librarian, excluding the force sword left arm, and then remove the Librarian shoulder pad and the Psychic Hood. This ended up a bit tricky later on as a part of the shoulder pad was attached to the body which made it hard to attach the shoulder pad later, but anyway…

Then was the tedious part of removing the Dark Angels and Librarian iconography., which included both shin sections, the horns off the side of the skull in the middle of the belt, the purity seal on the book and the dark angels symbol on the tabard. I left the books, keys, scrolls and assorted other bits because I thought they didn’t detract from the idea of Cypher – particularly if he was a lore keeper in the fluff.

I didn’t specifically take a photo of that step, but you can see it below. Next the Librarian’s hand was removed and replaced with a bolt pistol and hand from the Chaos Marine set (little horn removed). I thought this might add to the age idea, since the CSM items are supposed to be heresy era. I used a Space Wolves Plasma Pistol – mostly because I thought the icon on top would do for a lion as well as a wolf and the arm pose was reasonable. A pair of generic marine shoulder pads, one with the rivet patterns was added – the left arm was difficult because the way it connected – I had to take more off the shoulder part on the body that the previous picture showed in order to make it fit better.

The final main part was the Chaos Lord backpack, used because one of the pictures in the dataslate has a skull motif backpack on Cypher, which I liked. It’s also not too Chaos-y – even with the skull and spine patter there are no tentacles or mutations. I did snip off the base of the spinal column/tail bone area to level with the base of the backpack.

Here’s a side by side of the original Librarian and Cypher. I then had a quick look at the GW model on the website and realised that I had forgotten the sword, so back to the bitz box where I found the following sword (not sure what from originally): I chopped out the hand section and placed on the model. I picked this sword because I am going to paint it as a scabbard and the shape lent itself to being a scabbard a bit more than many of the others that I looked at.

Here is the final product (being chased by the Ravenwing as it happens):

So, I decided that I needed some green stuff for my land speeder conversion, so in a land of warped logic, I spent the whole day working on an obliterater so that I had two things to work on with the green stuff at the same time.

Only, I got so distracted that I never got to the green stuff, and I never got back to the landspeeder…

So, Obliterater number two started with an Assault on Black Reach (AoBR) terminator as well, but I wanted to change the dimensions a bit more with this one. Since it was painted, you can see the terminator bitz and the other bitz seperately in the pictures quite easily:

I made an assault cannon-like weapon out of cotton buds:

I split the terminator torso in half. I intend to keep the back vents showing in the final model, but I want it to look like it outgrew the original armour. Then I split up the legs instead of just going over them like the last one. I added a landspeeder typhoon missile launcher to the top.

Then I pinned the main bitz together into an armature of the final shape:

Next I tackled the arm:
Split it up as well. I want to keep the hand, the connector and if I can, the cable tray as well: Then I got some old audio-visual wire from a spare cord that I didn’t need any more, cut it up and used it to connect the second typhoon launcher to the right arm: Then for the gap filler, to which the head and the spikes (bamboo cooking skewers) are pushed into. I then modelled some muscle shapes onto the body and inserted some paperclip wire that will become tentacles soon:

Because I was on a roll, I then chopped the arms off my second Helbrute and added the Demon Prince bitz that I bought. I also left off the front plate with the mouth thing and the horns. At the moment the whole thing is blue-taked together so I can see how it feels. I’m reasonably happy with it so far:

Here’s the next one in the list, modifying the Ravenwing Sergeant. Again, removing the bare head in favour of a helmeted one, replacing the chainsword with a Dark Angels power fist, a Ravenwing shoulder pad and adding a Dark Angels symbol to the backpack.

I’m going to use this guy as the Veteran Sergeant and move the standard out of the box one down to an ordinary guy in the combined squad. Alternately, they might be deployed as two smaller bike units.

So, here’s the un modified piece:

First was the arms removal, at the shoulder, then the head was removed. I originally tried to keep parts of the hood, but I just couldn’t shape a head down to fit correctly with it – I ended up destroying an entire marine head in the process. The second head only had a little bit of modification in order to allow it to fit on a flat (ish) body instead of in the normal space allocated.

Last was just the addition of an extra piece out of my bitz box, probably from a Ravenwing upgrade sprue originally.

Since my pack of new bitz arrived, I’ve taken a break from the Chaos side to give a bit of love to the Dark Angels.

I converted the first sergeant as well, because frankly, I hate bare heads. The only models I think they belong on are the insane (beserkers, Death Company) or the insanely arrogant – hance one of the Chaos Terminators.

Anyway, I cut off the second sergeant at the waist of the back piece, just below the belt. Then I replaced the back with a standard marine one, put the DV front on it and then added new arms, head and backpack from the bitz collection.

Turns out my normal webstore supplier of bitz sells bags of bitz at a reasonable price – take whatever you get in the snaplock bag. I found this out while looking through the prices of various heavy weapon options for my obliterator conversions.

So, I removed the front chest piece from the terminator, and then added gap filler to, oddly enough, fill the gap. A chaos marine head went onto the gap filler as it set.

Next, some greenstuff to bulk up the legs. These are also my first attempts at doing muscle shapes, and while a bit poor, I did learn a bit as I was going. The abs definitely didn’t work quite as I’d hoped, but oh well.

I added a bit on the back of the arm as well. Again, tried to get the look/feel of a tricep going. Not sure I got there, but the oblits give me a bit of leeway to learn.

Lastly, I tried a technique I saw on the web the other day for making chain mail. That used up my leftovers.

Might seem like a bit of a random change to go to Obliterators in the middle of a terminator conversion, but there is madness to my logic!

I’ve never done any significant greenstuff work before, and the next phases of my terminators conversion needs some greenstuff to achieve what I want. So, therefore I need to learn to do greenstuff. I’ve been surfing the net, reading and watching tutorials, and I’ve got an idea about what I want to achieve now. So, I also have some Assault on Black Reach Terminators, and the intent is to make them Obliterators, since the Space Hulk and Dark Vengeance boxes have given me an oversupply of terminator models. Since the conversion seems to be relatively straightforward, and ‘fleshmetal’ type organic looks seem to be a decent way to learn/practice to greenstuff, it’s over to these guys for a while. It also gives me space to get things wrong and then bulk up the model with another layer, which my terminators probably wouldn’t accept as easily.

I’ve been keeping some stuff in my bathroom for a while because I like the interesting shapes. For anyone who hasn’t seen these before, they are inter-dental brushes used as a substitute for floss. They last a week or so, come in packs of ten in the supermarket. I’ve been using a couple of different brands, and cleaning off and keeping the used brushes in a corner of the bathroom. They also come with caps which have a series of different sizes.

The second set of materiels is a cotton bud (again from the bathroom, this time unused) and the terminator arm itself.

First off, I cut off the magazine and stored for later. Then I cut the end off one of the caps from the interdental brushes and added it below.

Next the cotton bud got cut into four sections, the edges straightened up a bit and them backed in to look like an automatic weapon barrel. This was then added to the side of the arm.

Next came the greenstuff, into which was also pushed a part of a chainsword that I cut out for the Terminator conversion in an aborted attempted to make a chainfist out of one of the powerfist guys. Turned out to be almost perfect for this though! I’ve tried to make the greenstuff look like fleshy, ropy muscle bits on the outside parts, and I decided to keep the shoulder pad intact as well as the feed tube type part from the terminator model.

On the inside, I’ve then had a first attempt at sculpting eyes to match the Dark Vengeance eye theme. This took a bit of playing around, but thanks to some great you-tube videos around I think I managed something at least passable. Better yet, I learnt a lot.

Here is the arm back on the body. The body will get a fair bit of work yet, and a whole scratch built left arm to boot.

There is still a little bit to fix between the weapons/on top of the arm area, some bits to smooth out and some muscles to add. I decided to wait to let the first bit set before tackling the next phase, since that seems to be most of the advice online – don’t bite off too much in one sitting!

I learnt a lot from this.

1. Greenstuff goes further than I thought it would. I mixed what I expected to be a first part only, and then got everything I wanted out of it.

2. Be careful what you hold. I lost one of the eyes and had to reform after a careless thumb indentation…

3. The general smoothing and making the eye shape was roughly what I expected, which was good!

On to the Assault Cannon Terminator. I’m going to leave the weapon relatively untouched and play as a Reaper Autocannon. Anyway, the insignia went on this one as well. After this picture the swords hanging from the waist were removed as well. I smoothed out the winged insignia. Not sure exactly what it will end up being, maybe just painted.

Then onto the assembly. I’m not going to fiddle with the pose too much for this guy:

Next was Chainfist guy – again, scrapping off the insignia.

The Sergeant -> Aspiring Champion was next, with the obligatory insignia scrape. I then tried to convert the headdress into a more Chaos feel – my main theme is Tzeencth, so I thought I’d see if I could get it to look a bit like the sorcerer’s helmet:

After that, I dove back into the bits box and did the initial assembly.

Here’s the whole squad at the moment:

And each of the individual guys:

Powerfist 1: Not much change yet. This guy has the Chainfist models bolter arm to change the pose up a bit.

Powerfist 2: This guy had his arm significantly repositioned as per the last post, and then got the sorcerer Terminator front and one of the spare heads.

Chainfist: Spare bolter arm and the space shoulder pad from the Lord pack. His chest wing thing has been shaped into more of a demonic spike with the feather shaved off.

Cannon: Just shorn of insignia at this stage.

Champion: Insignia cleaned up, the headdress changed and a top knot from a spare aspiring champion head from the Chaos Marines kit.